In a working-class neighborhood of Hanoi, Vietnam, at the top of a small building, two rooms with altars covered in fruit and flowers receive visitors' quiet prayers. It is here, in a book-lined office, that the Union for Informatics Application (UIA) evaluates the "special abilities" of people who claim to communicate with spirits. "We can't leave this work to just anyone, otherwise people will take advantage, to make money and harm society," said the UIA's director, Vũ Thê Khanh, a small white-haired man who founded the organization in 1992.

In Vietnamese, such mediums are referred to by a neologism that can be translated as "extrasensory specialist," according to French anthropologist Paul Sorrentino, the author of a book on the phenomenon, A l'épreuve de la possession. Chronique d'une innovation rituelle dans le Vietnam contemporain ("Tested by Possession: Chronicle of a Ritual Innovation in Contemporary Vietnam").

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